I am thinking of buying a Laptop and while searching for some "deals" I hit upon this person who is offering a 3 month old ASUS laptop (dont know the model but its 2GHz, 160GB, 1G RAM, DVD mutidrive) at half the price of original. This makes me think if its dodgy??

Is there any site or facility to check for stolen eletronic goods by serial number?
This probably could apply to all type of items we buy from internet sites with blind faith.

The Police do maintain records of stolen property. This data is generally provided by insurance companies when people lodge a claim.

It does surprise me that somebody like the insurance council doesn't make such a database publically accessible so people can check the status of goods. It's obviously far from 100% because information is only added when goods are reported stolen to an insurance company. If such a database combined with the stolennz site could be combined it would make a rather useful resource.

Disenchanted: Use common sense. If the seller is on trademe with 5000 good feedbacks and sells dozens of cheap laptops every week, they are probably legit sellers of ex-lease gear or similar.

This happened to one of my work laptops. It was stolen mid-week and during friday night drinks we were having a bit of a laugh about what we'd do if we came across someone selling it on TradeMe. Well, that weekend i DID find a laptop very similar to the one that was stolen being auctioned on TradeMe. After a sneaky question, i got the serial number out of the seller which confirmed it was in fact my stolen one. Cops were called and i was asked to help them out by following though on the purchase as if it were a real purchase. After getting pick up address details from the seller, the cops went down to meet him.

ANYWAY, long story short... this guy had about 2500 feedback and approx 99% positive. Ends up he was an overstayer with a living room full of stolen goods and was shipped out of the country a week later.

My advice? Go with your gut... if it seems to good to be true then it most probably is

suvneet: If anything, atleast Trademe should make checks against police records.. otherwise who is responsible?

Why should Trademe do that? They never see the goods. Its up to the buyer to be sure they are not falling foul of the law. If TM had to do it, then listing fees would skyrocket to account for the manual labour that would have to go into each of thousands of auctions.

What if I wanted to sell 30 laptops - its just not a good solution to send them to Trademe so they can run checks, then have them sent to the new buyer, or back to me if they dont sell.

Last year my friend from course purchased a mobile from Cash Converters and when she was at course she got an interesting call from someone she didn't know and said that the phone was stolen. Then after my friend finished on the phone she rung up the Police and said that the phone she purchased from Cash Converters and she also had the receipt to prove that the phone was purchased from Cash Converters. The Police didn't place a charge against my friend but had a very long chat with the people at Cash Converters.

Interesting, but not plausible... If she bought a CDMA then Telecom has to connect the phone and it would be checked at that moment.

If she bought a GSM then she would put her own SIM card and unless Vodafone was checking for the IMEI during a call then the previous owner wouldn't know the phone was in use (if Vodafone is checking the IMEI they would call your friend, not give your friend's number to the previous owner, because this would be a breach of privacy).

Of course she could have bought a prepay with a SIM card already in it. In this case the previous owner was probably calling the phone every day for a few days, but in most likely scenario would give up after a few days and deem it as "lost" not stolen.

Vodafone also block the IMEI numbers of any phones reported stolen to them meaning that even if you put another SIM in the phone still won't work.

I still reckon the best idea comes from Holland - they enter the IMEI numbers of stolen phones into a database which will send SMS's to the phone every few minutes saying it has been stolen. Even if you change the SIM the network still knows it's the same phone because of the IMEI number

Of course she could have bought a prepay with a SIM card already in it. In this case the previous owner was probably calling the phone every day for a few days, but in most likely scenario would give up after a few days and deem it as "lost" not stolen.

No after my friend got off the phone with the person she told the class that the person on the phone for the person who sold it to Cash Converters and then my friend said that she purchased the phone from Cash Converters and then the person on the phone said that it was stolen.

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